The Sunday Ishmael: 10/05/2026

  Even though he lost, he thinks he's won, puir wee deluded little tortoise heid. 

"Ye see, the people of Scotland have returned us to government for another five years, in a landslide.  It is a resounding vote of confidence in the SNP."

"Oh no it isn't. Only 53.2% of the electorate bothered to vote."

"Oh, yes, it is. It is an overwhelming mandate for an Independence Referendum. If Westminster refuse it, that's a massive democratic deficit."

"Bollocks. They'll just say no. How many actually voted for you, Swinehead?"

"I'm not telling."

" Okay, how many seats have you got?"

"58."

"How many seats did the others get?"

"71, but, no matter, we are experts in running a minority government."

"Hmm. What does that tell us? Oh, yes, most people don't want you in power. No majority for you, Swiney."

"Our minority government will be successful at furthering the SNP's progressive agenda."

"God help us, then. I'm already paying more tax than I would in England, and now I've got to pay for the SNP's bribes - ten grand to everyone buying their first house, and an extra 40 quid a week for new babies, and there's already a 5 billion Black Hole in the Scottish finances."

"We achieved 38% of the vote."

"See? Most people don't want you. 53.2% who turned out to vote of the 3, 784,094 registered Scottish voters is 2013138. You got 38% of that - which is 764992.44. That's all."

"We will talk to all the parties. Except Reform. They are rude. Divisive and discriminatory. Racist. Not like the Greens. The Greens will side with us."

"The Greens are as anti-semitic as Jeremy Corbynites."

"That's not racist."

Seriously - it is the only form of racism that is entirely acceptable to the progressive liberal establishment. Not just in Islington, but also in Holyrood. 

Anyway, it is not the outcome I'd hoped for, but you know I'd anticipated it, the Scots being so forgiving of incompetence, fraud and cronyism. The nationalists secured 58 seats; Scottish Labour and Reform came joint second with 17; the Scottish Greens won 15; the Scottish Conservatives ended with 12 and the Scottish Lib Dems 10. The Greens and the SNP both want to break up the United Kingdoms, so they are natural bedfellows. Reform did astonishingly well in Scotland, securing almost 400,000 votes and winning 17 seats - having had only 1 seat previously - a turncoat Tory. They are rude, though. There was lots of shock and horror at the reported twitterings of one new Reform counsellor in England, who opined on social media that Nigerians should be melted down and used to fill in the potholes. Richard Tice, Farage's Deputy, (do you think he uses Grecian 2000, or is it a full hairdresser job?)

laughed it off, preferring to focus on "thank goodness someone cares enough about our Nigel to give him £5 million for his security. No, honest, not a scandal, he wasn't an MP at the time so the question of declaring it in the Member's Interests register just didn't arise."

 I must say, I personally would feel much more secure if a kindly benefactor gave me £5 million. I'd feel better with a mere £5 grand. Hell, yes, even £500 would be welcome. 

I've probably confused our foreign readers and those who would much rather not be paying attention. Britain had two different sorts of election on Thursday last. Scotland and Wales had their national elections, and England had local government elections. Local government, or, The Council, attends to local issues for local people. Schools, roads, dustbins, planning. Proper Government is Westminster, down London. Pretend Government is Scotland's Holyrood in Edinburgh and Wales' government is The Senedd in Cardiff. The Welsh have booted Labour out and voted in a chap with an unpronounceable name and extraordinarily large ears.

Rhun ap Iorwerth - ssh, don't mention the ears.

That's enough Welsh nonsense, it's bad enough keeping up with Scottishery. 

The BBC have a spiteful little arrangement in the Scottish politics studio. 

They have a very high desk with high stools for the interviewees to perch on. Like one of those godverdomme kitchen islands. The purpose is clearly to render uncomfortable the interviewees as their buttock cheeks clench to hold them to the stool. Maybe the producers hope they will be so worried about falling off that they will let slip important items of Government policy. Long-legged blokes are usually ok, but it goes hard on short fat girls in skirts.

Gillian Mackay, MSP, Scottish Green Co Leader.

Gillian Mackay did the buttock clench dance this morning on the Sunday Show, while seated next to her was 

Scotland, not a country for beautiful men

Thomas Kerr, MSP (Reform). Reform's exclusion from political co-operation and people not talking to him was dismissed by Kerr as "political posturing before we set foot in the chamber." He added that:  "scunnered and angry people are." A bit Obi Wan Kenobi, that. And he didn't want them to have the free bus travel the Greens had promised them.

The forced proximity to the deplorable Reformite, coupled with the high stool and  the need to display demonstrably contemptuous body language resulted in Gillian leaning perilously further and further away from her offensively bearded fellow guest.  Oh, I wish she had fallen off. But no, she remained fully in command of stool and brief. She told us all about the cohort of new transgender MSPs. I think I have mentioned how forgiving the Scottish people are. But Q.'s election really does take the biscuit. Q is an Indian citizen, who does not hold British citizenship or permanent residency, but nevertheless was elected to serve the good people of Edinburgh and Lothian East as their MSP. He or she attends the University of St. Andrews on a student visa and is fundraising for a graduate visa to remain in the UK after the student visa expires. Asked why the Greens had fielded him/her as a candidate who might well be required to leave the country before the parliamentary term expires, Gillian responded that she was confident that the Home Office would extend the visa to allow Q to remain to continue his/her Parliamentary duties. Alas, she's probably right. But really, is Q. a politician or a student? How can he or she concentrate on his/her studies whilst representing his /her constituents? Isn't studying the whole reason for him/her being in Scotland? Is this whole thing just a little bit Alice in Wonderland? 

Q. Mannivannan. Fucked if I know.

The other transgender Green MSP is Iris Duane.

I remember when the Green Party were all about pretty flowers, saving whales and not using hairspray.

Labour took a beating, in the national devolved nations and in the local elections. Fortunately, Keir Starmer is not letting it get him down, nor is he taking it personally. He is committed to staying in Downing Street for ten years. He has a plan. That plan is Gordon Brown.

No, I know. Really. The fiscally prudent former Prime Minister. The one who burned all the money and saved the world. Sir Keir Starmer's Master Plan is to get him out of retirement and ask his advice. Just as he was enjoying his retirement, up there in Kirkcaldy - here's mr ishmael reporting on the Brown retirement back in May 2010.

Sunday, 23 May 2010

SNOTTY IN RETIREMENT.

"No more than two garments in the changing room"

Hello, Gordon here, Prime Minister Emeritus, and as I said, not for me the glittering prizes of the speaking circuit, Oh, no, not like some people I could mention. Who have NohVaaahl-ewes. No, I always said it would be charity work for me. And here I am, my first day, volunteering in Oxfam, Kirkcaldy, or wherever the fuck this shithole is,

No, no, I'm sure it's a very nice place, full of people I put on the dole and made homeless, it was the right thing for the country. And, more than ever, they need my help and that's why I am here, sorting out the bri-nylon shirts for them, some of them, you know, they're not too bad at all, a bit smelly and sort of yellow under the armpits, rather like a tired old government full of thieves and arseholes but, Hey, beggars can't be choosers. And that's what we are now, thanks to me, a nation of proud beggars in second-hand clothes, forced into driving little MickyMouse cars, because of the price of petrol, I don't drive, myself, being too stupid, and so the Mrs, who looks after me, dropped me off here at ten o' clock, we don't open earlier, because the old people who work here are often up all night being incontinent, or having nightmares about means-tested benefits and can only manage to totter in here at ten, and anyway, that's the time that their bus passes start working, thanks, I might add, to me, eleven million pensioners lifted in to poverty, meanest pension in Europe, that's what we can do, together, as Labour, Och, would you listen to me, sounding-off like I was still prime minister. Which, of course, I am. But nobody is to know, until I have helped Mr CallMeDave and Mr IAgreeWithHim sort out this pickle they've got themselves into, with the NoMoney business, Don't know what they're complaining about. When I took office on that bright, glorious May morning in nineteen-ninety-seven, there was plenty of money, burnt a treat, it did. And anyway, they can always get Mr King to print them some more.

There's quite a lot of stock, here, it's almost as if it was worthless, like the government bonds, and the pound; there's these things, here, piles of them, all folded-up by the volunteers, hankies, they're called, can't imagine what they're for, one of the nutter volunteers - they've all been out in the Sun too long, you know, apart from me, or else they've missed their medication, which is something they shouldn't do - said they were for blowing your nose into but I can't see the point of that, why would you do that when there's so much hunger in the world, best to just eat those bogies right up and afterwards wipe your fingers on your tie, like I do. It's the right thing for the country. And the world. Which I saved. And don't you forget it. Talking of which, I phoned my friend President Obama, the other night, to offer him some advice on the global situation but it must have been a crossed line because all I could hear was some rather unpleasant coloured people, laughing and swearing at me. I must get my new government to look into these communications difficulties. Only not Mr Blunkett, the blind bastard. Or Mr Reid. Maybe my old friend Peter Mandelson, he's very good at communications.

Well, there's some Danielle Steele books just come in and some Wilbur Smith, too, so I'd better go and dust them off, put those sticky wee price labels on them - although I do think two pounds ninety-nine is a bit stiff, even if the money does go to the savages out in Africa - and put them over here with the James Galway cassettes and the pink bedside lamps, funny how one generation's sought-after and hard-won belongings are so swiftly revealed as worthless trash but still, that's the miracle of economic growth, or Boom, which I invented and Bust, which is nothing to do with me. Look around, if only there was a poet, here, like my former young friend, stanislav, how he might mock these greasy Brevill sandwichmakers, these made-in-Taiwan brass plaques and magazine racks, displaying Constable's England, blurred wee prints of Mr Breughel's Hunters In The Snow, once delighted-in, now discarded, like a reviled and useless prime minister. It's one of the great strengths of the family, you know, of which I have a young one, that when parents die the children can't even be arsed to look at their parents' treasures but just fuck them all off down the charity shop, quick, so they can get the house sold-off, before Mr Osborne wants a chunk of it. The embellishments of family life, ghastly, cheap and vulgar, hastened away by grasping kin, to charity shops: it's a sort of a metaphor, really, for people who aren't up to the job, and just cling on, being a nuisance. But I'm not like that, I still talk to my father, John, up in Heaven, he made me what I am, I owe it all to him; well, I owe quite a lot to you, too. But you've no chance.

I think I'll like working in Oxfam, I've already made some new friends

My new Cabinet at a working lunch. I was in charge.

and they all do exactly as I tell them to. It's an onerous responsibility on me, me being barking mad and a criminal lunatic but I had a wee fish supper with the manager the other night and he said that after he'd had a good go at being in charge and when the place was about to go bust then I could be in charge. But to start off I'd better just come in two half-days a week. Taking things easy, that's the thing for old people like me, with a young family. Divorce, what, me and Sarah-George, no, well, she hasn't mentioned it to me, anyway.

Well, I must rush, I'll just go and Hoover round those people, the ones trying to look at the books. Best to let them know who's Boss of this charity shop. (Me.)

And then I'll go home and have a wee sit-down, and hold my willy, for a few years.

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There’s something very Starmer about calling in Gordon Brown when things feel wobbly. He tried Mandelson, and we know how that ended. And now he's reached into the Kirkcaldy Oxfam shop and pulled out Gordon Brown like a smelly old winter coat.

But here's the catch - he really is old - well, he's only 75, but he's really not aged well. It must be all those years in the charity shop. So, the Cabinet need to order a nice new Ouija board from Amazon, just in case Gordon shuffles off to his final reward. Is there anybody there? Preferably with economic experience? But who else might manifest alongside Gordon, like a Victorian ghost in his nightie, shuffling and muttering about fiscal prudence? Next week: Harold Wilson appointed Minister for AI. The week after: Clement Attlee brought back to steady the ship. By June, Starmer will be consulting Pitt the Younger.

Sharon Graham, Unite's General Secretary, reckons Labour is about to become extinct. "(Labour voters) didn’t expect their Labour Government to pit pensioners against the disabled. They didn’t expect accounting rules to be the top priority. They are asking what Labour is for. Labour lost the towns, swathes of the Midlands and the north. They are becoming the Party of the professional middle class. Not a cross-class coalition, but a strictly middle-class centrist party. Rootless. Unmoored from its history and from the working class."

On the Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, she reminded Starmer that Labour's job is to represent working people. That's why the trade unions set it up in the first place and why they continue to provide its funding - funding raised by the subs of trade union members. Should the unions choose, they could turn off that tap.

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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

Me, next, Me.